The Sisters Mythwhisper
by Lightning Eyed
Summary: Growing up in a family of seven can be a little crazy, especially when your parents are some of the social elite of the Myth wizards. When the oldest twins don't make it into the Myth School and things are in a downward spiral throughout the entire Spiral, it's very difficult for the Mythwhisper family to stick together. Somehow, though, they must manage.
1. The House on Cyclops Lane

Before you start reading, I think it's important to tell you that I am merely a free-to-play wizard on Wizard101, and therefore apologize if I make any errors regarding any plotline past Triton Avenue. I've done extensive searching on several fansites, forums, and wikis to make this as accurate as possible, but nobody's perfect, and I still don't understand too much of this Dragon Titan stuff. But_ id est quod est, _my dear readers.

* * *

Adrienne Mythwhisper was one exasperated mother.

Five kids, included among them a set of twins, were the source of her exasperation, especially since all five of said kids were proving to be powerful Wizards already, not to mention the cousins that lived next door, whom her sister Anastasia was always after her to watch while she was off vacationing in Azteca. And then there was her husband, Dustin, who almost never came home, ever since he'd been appointed to keep an eye on the entire Cyclops Legion, since Cyrus was too busy assigning his latest students too much homework to watch them.

Thankfully, her oldest daughters, the twins, were nearly old enough to enroll in Ravenwood School. And soon after them, the second oldest would begin schooling. And the youngest two were the best behaved (though that wasn't saying any of them were particularly well behaved.)

Just now, the youngest, Neela, who was six years old, was descending the stairs, but jumping down each one so that it creaked underneath her weight. Her blonde hair, like that of her slightly older sister Megan, had a slight wave to it, and it bounced every time she stuck her landing. Adrienne was a little irritated that Neela was all but crashing through the stairs, but she had to sit back and smile at the little ball of energy.

Megan, on the other hand, was sitting in a blue chair that was five times larger than her, curled up with one of Dustin's old spellbooks, from a better time when Ravenwood wasn't struggling for new teachers, a time when the Myth School was taught by Adrienne's grandmother, Lyra. But Lyra had been struck by a cold a year before, a terrible and deadly cold that had already claimed twelve lives in Wizard City alone, a cold that, just when it seemed it was gone, came back with enough force to punch out even the little energy-balls like Neela; and the Myth School teacher was replaced by Dustin's cohort, Cyrus Drake.

The door burst open just then, letting in the three older children: Emma and the twins, Iridian and Grace. (For the record, Adrienne didn't believe in naming twins names that started with the same letter. She had found that they became more annoying when you did that, especially in the case of her twin sister Anastasia. After all, the Drake brothers didn't seem to have a problem with each other.)

Iridian immediately went up to her room to begin on the preliminary schoolwork given to her by Cyrus (a tradition that Adrienne found completely ridiculous, but that she could hardly complain about, since it was what had tipped the scale in favor of Myth when the Book of Secrets couldn't choose between it and Ice). Grace followed her after throwing her cloak in the wash. Emma, a year younger than the thirteen-year-old twins, pulled a random book off the shelf and plopped down next to Megan in the chair. The ten-year-old protested, but moved to make room.

Adrienne breathed a sigh of relief that all five kids were indoors again. Strange things were stirring in Wizard City, and this time she was sure it wasn't just her fantasy, her love of all things dramatic and dangerous, the nature of a conjurer. This time, it was real.


	2. The Twins

Iridian grumbled as she flipped through the pages of the preliminary spellbook. In the book, it explained the basics of dueling with bloodbats, but she was far too bored after watching the Cyclops Legion muster to bother with bloodbats. She and her cousin Christina, in fact, called them "barf bats" behind Adrienne's and Anastasia's backs, something that Iridian was sure would get the two of them in a lot of trouble if their parents ever found out.

"I don't think Myth is my school at all," Grace huffed as she skimmed her yellow-bound book, explaining how to call a beast by its True Name so that it would work for you, and how to release it before it drained all of your energy. "I think all these adult Conjurers are too full of themselves to realize that their kids can be put in other schools."

"Like Malistaire," Iridian pitched in. "His parents decided he was going to be a conjurer, so they put him in the preliminary program. Then it turns out he's a necromancer." _And a good enough one to beat his twin brother in a duel, and become the teacher that the Death School has been looking for since the last teacher, Persephone, had summoned a wraith that was a little too powerful_, she thought, but didn't voice these words to Grace for fear that she wouldn't agree.

Grace shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Or like Professor Greyrose. They expect all the fairies to use life and myth magic, because they're fairies. But she went outside the bounds and trained in Ice instead, and look where she is now." _She's the Professor of Ice, and she's the Tooth Fairy that Megan and Neela are still so excited about. _However, Grace didn't voice her thoughts, either.

Emma pushed the door open a crack. "Mother wants to see you two regarding registration." The twins could clearly see in their sister's orangish-hazel eyes that she too was anxious to go to Ravenwood. They met each other's eyes, the one part of them that wasn't identical, and then followed Emma down to Adrienne's study.

As soon as they entered, Adrienne started talking. "Girls," she began, "we've been thinking of enrolling you in the school a month early, since you both seem so eager to start training. Your father and I have talked to Professor Anbrose, and he says he thinks it's fine if you start sooner, since you've already learned about dueling from your preliminary courses. He wants the two of you to meet him in his tower tomorrow morning to consult the Book of Secrets. However, I'm required to ask if you're ready."

The twins exchanged a glance. A lot passed between them.

_What if we aren't Myth? What will Adrienne think? What will Cyrus think? Or even Ambrose? _

But their excitement overcame their fear, and both pairs of eyes turned back towards Adrienne.

"We're ready," they answered in perfect unison. There was a month until their fourteenth birthdays, on the twenty-sixth of October, but they were glad to start school earlier, though none of their cousins seemed too particularly interested.

"Good," Adrienne replied, nodding. "Now, hurry off to your tower and finish up that preliminary training, since you'll need to know it by tomorrow."

The twins ran right into Emma outside the door.

"If she asks, I wasn't listening," Emma whispered and darted up the stairs. Iridian sniffed and Grace rolled her eyes, but the two followed Emma back to their rooms.

"I'm done already," Iridian confessed, referring to the book.

"I was done a while ago," Grace agreed.

The twins exchanged a high five and climbed into their beds on either side of the room.

"What do you think Mother will do if we aren't Myth?" Grace finally voiced the question the two of them had silently exchanged back in Adrienne's study.

"I don't know," Iridian said, shaking her head although Grace couldn't see. "She won't like it, though. She may force us to join into the school of Myth anyways."

"I hope not," Grace sighed, tracing snowflakes on her bed cover with her finger. "I hope I'm Ice."

Iridian could definitely see Grace in the Ice school, dressed in the light blue she was so fond of, so much more than she could visualize her identical twin glaring down fellow conjurers in royal blue and yellow.

Grace, on the other hand, wasn't sure where she could see Iridian. Her sister's silver eyes seemed to reflect anything they touched upon, except for Myth. Grace couldn't picture Iridian in yellow robes, either. It wasn't a matter of the professor; Cyrus was like an extra father to the girls whenever he wasn't being teacherly or otherwise mean. It was a matter of the way their auras blended with the background- they just didn't.

Grace could hear Iridian snoring slightly in her bed. She giggled and settled into her own bed, trying to sleep but not doing so well a job of it in her excitement. She stayed up long into the night thinking about how wonderful it would be to make it into the Ice School, where you used whole compositions of words of power, not just names. In the Ice School, you had much better control over the things you summoned, not to mention the things you shaped from the ice itself. Grace tossed her ironically flaming-red hair over her shoulder and sat with her back against the headboard of her bed, propping herself up on pillows to prevent it from digging into her back. Soon, though, she was tucked under the covers, dreaming dreams of frost beetles and colossi charging into battles with fire-elves and dragons- and winning those battles. Ice was one of the oldest and sturdiest schools; to Grace, it was a dream that would be either fulfilled or dashed to pieces like a broken ice statue tomorrow morning.

Iridian's dreams were more fitful. She saw a storm brewing on the horizon, dark clouds gathering over Wizard City and mingling with the branches of the Grandfather Tree. Familiar creatures turned dark in the heart of this storm; all the light that was left was soon gone. She saw Ravenwood crumbling, falling to pieces beneath the darkness.

She awoke with a start in her bed, silver eyes wide and panicked. Grace was sleeping peacefully, and outside the window there were no clouds; instead, Iridian could see a faint glow on the horizon promising another sunrise in a few minutes. She took a ragged breath and, deciding it was hopeless to try and sleep for that few minutes, swung her feet out of bed. Flipping through her closet, she decided on her favorite outfit, a set of lightweight dragon-scale armor that Aunt Anastasia had brought home from her travels in Dragonspyre. Iridian's was a silver color with gold trim; since Aunt Anastasia had had a hard time picking colors for her, she had chosen the most neutral colors she could think of. Anastasia, having a great gift for picking out gifts, had not given Grace something from Dragonspyre but instead held off for three months until she went to Marleybone, where she found a lovely white coat and ruffled hat that perfectly suited Grace's classic and classy style. Iridian had no doubt that was what Grace would choose to wear today, just as surely as that Grace would be put into the Ice School.

She herself had been sure of her outfit, but she was still unsure of what school she'd be put into. All she knew was that being surrounded by Myth growing up hadn't helped her somehow instinctual dislike of it, and that she wasn't likely to be placed there- but if she wasn't, her mother wouldn't like it.

Iridian sighed and fastened the belt of her dragon-scale armor, grabbing the Myth School preliminary book and leafing through the pages until she came to the page describing the other schools. She skimmed each one.

Fire- the art of the dragons, fueled by passion and shaped by incantations. No, that couldn't be her. She wasn't passionate about one thing, and she didn't think following your heart was a good idea, as most pyromancers did.

Ice- the art of the Colossi, which came from faith and persistence, and was shaped by chants. Well, perhaps. She was a fairly persistent and fearless girl. But she wasn't the same as Grace, and Grace was going to be the thaumaturge of the family.

So maybe Storm was her forte. Storm, which came from the Tritons, and was powered by a diviner's creativity, and which was controlled by the rhythm and rhyme of words rather than the words themselves. But with the power of Storm, you could easily overdo a spell, and cause it to fizzle and flare out rather than doing anything. Iridian, fearless as she was, did not take such risks.

The Elemental School was out, then. Perhaps she and Grace were not so identical after all. Well, at least landing in the Spirit School wouldn't irritate her parents so much as if she_ had_ been a diviner.

She was distracted from her information-seeking by Grace's yawn and murmur of "Go away, sun, I'm tired."

"Registration," Iridian whispered in Grace's ear. Her twin immediately shot up out of bed and ran to the wardrobe, pulling out the white-and-blue coat.

"How soon?" Grace asked, slipping into the coat.

Iridian shrugged. "Mother just said today."

Neela pushed the door open, glanced at Iridian and Grace, and ran off down the hall without saying a word. A fairy fluttered after her, dropping bits of pink-blue-and-green fairy dust. Iridian brushed a bit of the fairy dust off her shoulder in irritation and gathered the preliminary book and her practice wand into her bag, and the two of them crowded down to the foyer after Neela, who was jumping down the stairs again, eyes filled with happiness and energy. Instead of breaking through the stairs as she crashed down them, Neela seemed to make them look alive again. One even sprouted a new branch before Adrienne rushed over to Neela to pick her up and carry her down the rest of the stairs.

"She'll be a theurgist, you watch," Iridian whispered to Grace. "Wait eight more years till she goes to Ravenwood."

Grace nodded in agreement.

"Girls, we're going to be late!" Adrienne said, gathering the girls' paperwork and tossing her everyday cloak over her shoulders.

Grace glared at Adrienne's back and moved her feet as slow as humanly possible until Adrienne decided to drag her out the door. As the tall and imposing-looking conjurer closed the door, she called over her shoulder, "Emma, watch Neela for me. Megan, feel free to read anything but Daddy's high-level spellbooks."

"Okay," came Emma's voice, and Adrienne clicked off down the marble-tiled sidewalk in blue-and-gold heels.

Grace fiddled with the ruffles on her hat all the way to the Headmaster's office. Iridian's outfit didn't have anything to fiddle with which wouldn't have been awkward (like, for example, it's award to fiddle with a belt in public) but she was just as nervous as Grace, especially since she wasn't as sure which school would stake its claim over her.

Out of all six schools, three were the elementals, and those she had already labeled out of the question. Of the three Spirit Schools she had decided early on that Myth, though it was her parents' school, was not hers; she could never familiarize herself with calling on things by their True Names the way Adrienne did.

So Iridian had a choice between Life and Death, quite literally; a choice that she couldn't even make herself.

As the trio walked past the Bazaar, under normal circumstances the twins would have pressed their noses to the pretty colored glass and stared at the crazy new things Elik Silverfist, the Spiral-wide merchant, had brought from his latest trade voyage. Today, both of them walked past the store in silence and nervousness; neither had the time to go window-shopping.

Neither twin even spoke a word until the entirety of their trio had gathered in front of the Headmaster's home. In fact, they stood in silence even there until Grace commented, "The door isn't going to open itself."

Adrienne huffed and opened the door, ushering the girls through and closing it behind her.

"Ah," came the voice of an old man, most certainly the old man sitting at a large wooden desk at the front of the room- the Headmaster. "Welcome to Ravenwood School, Iridian and Grace Mythwhisper. Let us consult the Book of Secrets."


	3. The Book of Secrets

Headmaster Ambrose turned to the book, flipping it open to a page marked with a ribbon showing the Ravenwood seal. He held it in the crook of his left elbow, positioning the pages with his right hand.

"Who's first?" Adrienne asked him.

"Whoever wants to be," he answered, and Grace stepped forward. He turned his head to face an owl sitting on a perch on the desk and handed Iridian and Grace's papers to it. "Gamma, please take these to Mr. Lincoln for me."

Gamma hooted, grabbed the papers, and flew out the window with a rustle of feathers, and Ambrose faced Grace again. "The Book of Secrets can solve the deepest mysteries within you. Come to my side and look at its pages."

Grace stepped around Ambrose's desk to peer into the book. The headmaster set the book on a red velvet mat on his desk and pulled up a stool for Grace.

Iridian couldn't see into the book, but every so often Grace would stop in her reading and point to something on one of the pages. The headmaster would nod, and Grace would read on. Iridian became more and more anxious, watching her sister take the placement test, until finally the book spewed out a flurry of snow and Grace broke into a grin, which she quickly hid when she saw Adrienne's bitter face.

"You have been placed in the Ice School," Headmaster Ambrose announced as if nothing had happened. "Your instructor will be Lydia Greyrose, as I'm sure you know. After your sister has completed her placement, we will show you girls to your dorms." The headmaster was obviously ignoring Adrienne's sour glare, and he beckoned Iridian forward. "Now it is your turn."

Iridian sat herself down on the stool, and the headmaster flipped back to the marked page.

The text of the book was in a language Iridian didn't recognize, but she found herself reading its abstract words as easily as if she had known them in another life. She felt herself drawn to the book, though occasionally stopping, as Grace had, to point out an answer. This book forced her to honesty, and she had a slightly difficult time answering some of the questions it posed, especially the ones that exposed her selfish nature and the ones that made it so obvious which school they would put you into that she couldn't answer them.

Finally, after what had seemed like days but probably only been minutes, she found herself staring at the answer in the pages, as the last page seemed to create a rift in order and stir up chaos.

Iridian Mythwhisper had been placed in the school of Death.

Headmaster Ambrose closed the book, and the rift between order and chaos disappeared, but before he could announce the result to Adrienne and Grace, Adrienne came right up to the edge of the desk.

"I will not have a daughter in the School of Death!" Adrienne began with an angry whisper and finished with a shout so loud that Grace jumped and looked around to ensure no one else was in the room. "Much less my oldest daughter, Headmaster. It will bring a bad name to our family."

"Ah, so Malistaire Drake caused shame upon his family?" the Headmaster questioned. "By becoming a great duelist and the professor of the Death School, where even his younger brother cannot measure up to him?"

"That isn't what I'm getting at! Necromancy is dangerous, and there's something dark stirring in Wizard City, mark my words- I wouldn't be surprised if they have to do with each other!"

The headmaster set the Book of Secrets in the top drawer of his desk and locked it. "It could just as well have to do with Myth," he answered, sitting in his chair. "Necromancy is not the only magic that feeds from the spirit, Adrienne Mythwhisper. Theurgy and conjuration do the same thing. And after all, does it really matter to you which one of the Drake brothers is teaching her?"

"So there isn't a way to change it, then." Adrienne was using that tone of voice that said, _I admit that I'm wrong, and I'm sorry, but I can still summon a Gorgon. Can you do that? _(Of course, Ambrose probably could, since he was the headmaster of Ravenwood, but he pretended not to notice.)

"Not unless the student herself tells the Book to change her," the Headmaster said, "and that has even more dangerous consequences than studying divination and conjuration as your two primary schools."

Adrienne sighed and buried her face in her hands. "I just don't want what happened to Persephone to happen to my own daughter."

"Your daughter will not be casting wraiths in her first year at Ravenwood," the Headmaster assured Adrienne. "It is not wise to contradict the book."

Adrienne looked up again, glanced at Grace, then at Iridian.

"I do hope at least one of my daughters is a Conjurer," she said, her invisible tears evident in her face, then turned on her spiky gold-plated heels and marched out of the Headmaster's office.

"Ah, well, Simeon, you're perfectly on time, as usual," the Headmaster said, turning his attention to the boy in fiery red-and-orange robes who had just come in through the side door. "Please show Iridian and Grace to their dormitories, and introduce them to their fellow students. I have other business to accomplish."

Simeon nodded his head in respect for the Headmaster. "Novice training begins in a few minutes, so we'll need to hurry you two along."

And so the two oldest Mythwhisper sisters followed Simeon to the dormitories.

* * *

Neela was running up and down the stairs, her jump-and-crash routine forgotten, and Emma was seriously regretting letting her eat a sugar donut while trying desperately to catch her. Megan was curled up on her chair reading a book about the art of sorcery, or the balance of all things, which was one of Dustin's adult spellbooks, when Dustin walked in, accompanied by Cyrus Drake, of all the people in the whole of Wizard City. Neela didn't like the left-handed Myth School professor, and she cried every time she saw him, as she promptly began doing now. Emma rushed to comfort her, whispering, "Shh, Neela, at least it's not the other brother," and Megan flipped to a new chapter in the sorcerer's spellbook, completely oblivious to the fact that two of the most prestigious male conjurers in the city had just walked into her living room.

Dustin stalked over to the chair where Megan sat reading and snatched the book out of her hands, placing it on the highest shelf and holding out a novice theurgy spellbook instead. Megan stuck out her tongue when his back was turned, and Cyrus, who was watching, glared at her.

The two men retreated to Dustin's study, undoubtedly to discuss the affairs of the Cyclops Legion and Dustin's guest appearances in the Myth School. Neela immediately stopped crying and ran upstairs to release her fairy from the jar it had been in.

The door slammed open, and Adrienne, looking either angry or distraught, marched into the house, causing all of the kids to stop what they were doing, drop the objects in their hands, and stare, and causing Cyrus and Dustin both to emerge from the study.

"Registration didn't go well?" Dustin guessed.

"Grace is in the Ice School," Adrienne said, though both Cyrus and Dustin, and maybe even Emma, could tell that wasn't really the source of her distress. Rather, it must have been Iridian's placement that bothered her.

"And Iridian?" Cyrus questioned.

"The Death School."

The room fell completely silent. Cyrus nodded, knowing the feeling of being left behind in all your conjurer glory by the necromancers of the family. Neela let out a whimper and ran away to hide in her room, catching her fairy by a tiny hand and leading it along with. Megan even dropped the book in the middle of an interesting passage about why unicorns could heal so many people.

"Hey," Megan whispered, quietly though, "at least she's not a diviner."

"And the Book didn't call for her to transfer to Pigswick," Emma said with such a straight face that one thought for a second that she was serious.

Adrienne cracked a smile and went to the kitchen to prepare a meal, and things in the Mythwhisper household settled down to normal, or at least as normal as possible without the twins around.

But that lingering feeling of darkness on the rise was still there in Adrienne's heart… darkness that couldn't be stopped.


End file.
